Abstract:
The purpose of this study was to investigate the practices of kaizen philosophy in Dire Dawa National Cement Share Company. It sought to find out the level of kaizen implementation in the company, the extent of kaizen training provision, the achievements gained as well as the challenges faced by the company in implementing kaizen. To address the objectives, descriptive research design was employed, and mixed research approaches (i. e. an approach of both quantitative and qualitative) were used. Out of 243 respondents included in the study, 3 respondents were purposely selected for an interview based on the researcher’s knowledge and their better knowledge on kaizen practices while the remaining 240 respondents were selected for questionnaire by stratified sampling method. From the total of 240 questionnaires distributed to respondents, 236 were properly filled and collected. The quantitative data were analyzed by using the statistical package for social science (SPSS) Version 21and the qualitative data were analyzed by descriptive narrative method. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to investigate the implementation of kaizen tools and kaizen training, achievements obtained as well as challenges faced by the company and simple correlation analysis was used to observe the degree of relationship between kaizen tools and achievements, training and achievements and between variables. The results from the study show that on average kaizen tools have high level of implementation in Dire Dawa National Cement Share Company: with 5S having the maximum level of implementation and suggestion system and Total quality control (TQC) having the least level of implementation. Regarding challenges faced in kaizen implementation, lack of commitment and considering kaizen as a short term project posed the higher challenge whereas insufficient training and insufficient participation by workers posed the lower challenge. Results from the correlation analysis show that implementation of training and kaizen tools were significantly related to achievemen